


Locked Doors

by Medie



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: help_haiti, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-15
Updated: 2010-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a moment in the night -- on the way to Minbar with a ship full of escaped telepaths</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locked Doors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mylittleredgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mylittleredgirl).



> Written for [](http://mylittleredgirl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**mylittleredgirl**](http://mylittleredgirl.dreamwidth.org/) for the Help Haiti auction. Who asked for Garibaldi/Talia.

There is a certain dichotomy to life. There is dichotomy to all life, of course, but most especially a life enshrouded in telepathic ability. Two worlds overlapping each other, blurring at the edges, but wholly distinct in a way words cannot express. Not that Talia has not tried. She's grappled with the truth of it for as long as she can remember. The answer to every answer to every question, no secret left unsaid, total honesty not an aspiration, but a guaranteed fact of existence.

_Except._

Except for one's own people. She's never understood that part of her life, not really, even though her training has led her to always accept it without conscious question. She hadn't stood a chance of protesting that. They'd seen to that just as they'd seen to the certainty of everyone's mind open and welcoming to all concerned. No walls to hide behind, no doors to close, no shelter but the jumbled chaos of so many minds in close quarters. The only of them to ever know privacy were _them_. With their mentors, teachers, Psi Cops, there was only so far. Only so many doors and, still, no questions.

The secret no one talked about, thought about, just accepted as was. An egalitarian society if one ignored the glass ceiling and the tightly sealed doors.

Doors behind which the stuff of nightmares waited, unseen and out of reach.

Talia shudders, cold to her core, and feels the slow pass of a soothing hand along her spine. She turns her head, hair whispering over the coat that passes for a pillow, and sees Michael's smile.

"I'm no telepath," he murmurs, "but I can hear you from here."

She laughs, just a little, and moves closer without any real decision to do so. His arm comes up to wrap around her, tucking her tight against him, and she's not shy about going. "I'm sorry, it's just," she casts a glance back at the others. The dark bumps of bodies beneath cloaks and jackets. Refugee. Telepaths. She feels their dreams leaking out, curling around her mind, and she sighs. "Some of them are dreaming."

In sleep, control is weaker, the voices crowding in, other images slipping out. They're exhausted, their control nearly nonexistent, and she's stronger, stronger than she's ever been. It's so very difficult.

She could hate the Vorlons and their 'alterations' if she let herself. Sometimes, she does without any permission at all. Another sigh and she tucks her head beneath Michael's chin. "It's harder to shut them out."

She hears his reaction to that, the anger that seeps into her, warming her from the inside out. "Sorry," he says, sounding not at all. "You know what I think of that little deal."

"I do," Talia agrees. "One leash for another," she says, a little dutiful. Their arguments are infrequent, but intense and _that one_ had caused three separate fights in three separate sectors. Her parents never had the opportunity to send her to her room and she has no frame of reference to compare to Captain Sheridan's attempt at the same. Michael had certainly thought hysterical. She laughs, then, taking the edge of the comment. "It had to be done." He doesn't understand why and she's not sure that he ever will. There's no way to explain, to justify, not even if she invited him into her thoughts and laid it all out.

She just knows. If her people are to survive this, if the telepathic community can carve out a place for itself on the galactic stage, they have to start somewhere. They need their line in the sand and, just maybe, that's what this will get them. A place to dig in their heels.

"Yeah," he says, all that and more wrapped up in the one word. He sighs, rubbing her back again. "Just hate seeing you like this."

Talia nods, "I know." She slides one leg over his, enjoying the way his breath catches. "We'll reach Minbar in the morning, they'll be gone then." Spirited away to the protection, and training, of the Anla'shok. She's not sure about that, telepaths as Rangers, but Delenn believes. Jeff believes. If they do then she can at least try.

"You're still not sure, aren't you?"

She tilts her head, leaning back to look at his face, and smiles. "Are you _sure_ you aren't a telepath?"

"Don't need to be one to read you," he grins. "You show everything."

"You couldn't see my face," she points out.

"Don't need that either," Michael says. "You say as much with your body as you do with your face." He kisses her forehead. "Jeff'll take care of them."

"He'll try," Talia sighs, "but there's so much even he doesn't know." He's seen her scanned, seen what Bester did to her, what the Corps did to Jason. Jeffrey Sinclair knows better than most just what the Psi Corps does to its own, but even that isn't enough. She doesn't shiver with the truth of it, but only because some horrors stay deep. Deeper than muscle can reach. She looks back again, risking one more check. Her heart aches. "Some of them are so very damaged."

"Some," Michael says, meaning all. She can't argue with him. They're all damaged in their own way, wounded by their supposed safe harbour, and some wounds run deep. Her own are there, buried beneath the fingerprints the Vorlons left, and some days she feels them with each and every breath.

He kisses her again, soothing, and she breathes deep, soaking him in. She's heard Ambassador G'Kar's infamous comment about Babylon 5 and, she believes it. Not any of them are what they seem and Michael most of all. He was Sinclair's hammer before he was Sheridan's, and whether or not that reputation bothers him is a mystery not even Talia can solve. She knows that he thrives on protecting the people around him and that, sometimes, that means being a hammer ready to slam down at a moment's notice. Michael is what his family needs him to be. She's seen him protect the people he loves with that ferocious tenacity, is one of them, and she respects that part of him. Loves him for it.

But he's so much more than that. Talia's seen down deep to the truth of him. She's seen behind it all and loved him all over again for what she's found there. Rising up, she lays a hand on his chest and smiles. "The war won't last forever, Michael."

"No," he agrees, "but doesn't stop me from worrying every time you go up against one of those _things_."

The memory of a Shadow ship's scream echoes and she closes her eyes. "I worry too," she admits. The full depth of the Vorlon alterations is a mystery, even to her, but she can never ever look at a Shadow ship, feel the minds trapped within, and not quake. "Just not about that."

He wraps her up in a tight embrace, arms tight around her, and she lets him. Neither of them can ever truly forget, even for a moment, the truth behind all the lies.

Talia turns her head, resting it on his shoulder, and looks at the sleeping telepaths. They all learn to lie and call it the truth. They carry with them the same lessons she carries with her. They'll fight the same battles that she did, taking back their own minds with each and every victory, and they'll stand on their on the same way she does now.

They'll have to if they want to survive this.

She just hopes that, in time, when those battles are won, there will be someone there to celebrate with. Curling her fingers around Michael's, Talia lets her eyes close and her mind start to sink. This time, though, she opens the pathways between them and, when she drifts, it's into the safety of his thoughts and the shelter of their dreams.

She smiles and, falling asleep, lets herself enjoy it.


End file.
